Barter Your Way to Multidimensional Impact

[Music]

leave the campground

nicer than you found it something my dad

used to say a lot when i was growing up

the funny thing is we didn’t camp as a

family so it took me a little while to

figure out what he was getting at

it’s a pretty simple concept really try

to create a positive

impact on the world around you yet the

ways to achieve that

aren’t always simple but i will trade

you

an impactful idea for a few minutes of

your time

now by implementing barter into your

life

you can achieve multi-dimensional impact

and that’s the idea impact for you

impact for your community and impact for

the planet

so trading one thing for another in the

absence of cash

is not a new concept uh in fact we have

evidence of this going back to 6000 bc

among the ancient egyptians

but then commerce became more complex

and we developed currency

and currency allowed us to address some

of the friction points of legacy barter

but here we are 8 000 years later

and there are billions of people around

the world that don’t have easy access

to currency or banking systems

many of those people live in developing

economies

but many of them also live in developed

economies such as immigrant populations

that don’t have government

identification

so they don’t have access to banks or

credit cards

so there’s a broad swath of the

population that would benefit

from a way to acquire goods and services

without cash

but many of them are out of sight and so

they’re out of mind for

most of us but then something happened

in 2020 that changed the equation

the four horsemen of the apocalypse

galloped across the sky

leaving a swath of death and destruction

actually they were on airplanes and

there were definitely more than four of

them

the coronavirus pandemic hit and that

changed everything

we are living in a time of massive

economic upheaval

tens of millions of people are out of

work entire industries

like travel and movie theaters are

cratering

and now we are all living in the

proverbial

but for much of the world they were

already living in the and

struggling we just didn’t know it

or we didn’t pay attention to it from

foreign slums

to whatever town you’re from this is

dallas texas

where i grew up i never saw this as a

child

but it was there the whole time but we

all

know people that are going through tough

times

think of the gofundme campaigns that

you’ve seen people are having difficulty

paying for

a child’s tuition an emergency medical

procedure cash bail

now back out of that level of

difficulty and

think about things that we’re all going

through regularly

so you parents in the audience with

younger kids

think about all the times you have to

buy new clothes and sporting equipment

for your kids

seemingly as soon as you had just

purchased the last batch of stuff

now as the father of a 16 year old son

who’s grown from a zygote to over six

feet tall i can tell you drives me nuts

so you see we actually run the gamut

here from

things that are financially annoying to

ruin us

but times of economic upheaval bring

these problems

to the surface in a very aggressive way

so how to acquire goods and services

without cash some

simple examples um i’ll go hunt for food

if you guard the camp makes sense easy

transaction

everybody wins but what about bartering

at scale

well governments barter at absolutely

massive scales but we think of that

as the levers of diplomacy

businesses barter at scale there are

b2b barter exchanges around the world

that are transacting billions of dollars

in goods and services

annually an example might be an

accounting firm

trading services with a marketing firm

and the tougher times get and the more

businesses want to preserve their cash

the more activity there is on these

exchanges

so why not among consumers

is it because consumers who would need

the barter or people that

are on the fringe of society

no this might surprise you it surprised

me

in 2016 forbes published an article that

stated

63 percent of americans could not absorb

500 emergency expense without going into

debt

or taking money from some other more

important need

consider this in 2016

when things were supposedly going quite

well

two out of three americans couldn’t

absorb a 500

hit car breaks down

fridge goes on the fritz dog gets sick

and you’re in debt to cover that expense

imagine what percentage of americans

that would be today

if it was 63 percent back then i’m

pretty sure

100 of those people would barter for

goods and services

if they had an efficient way to do it

now even with that said we are still

collecting and accumulating more goods

than ever

so much so that we have celebrities like

marie condo and the minimalists

pushing us to get rid of our crap to

make our lives better

so we are basically a race of hoarders

uh and that leaves us with so much

stuff that we’re left with few choices

we can either throw it away which is bad

for our planet because we are clogging

up our landfills

we can sell it on services like ebay and

the like

or we can spend more money on our stuff

by getting it

its own little apartment with some of

its friends in the form of self storage

in fact 20 of americans pay for self

storage

we have more self storage facilities in

the united states

then we have mcdonald’s starbucks

and subway locations combined

i’m no better that’s mine now

i will say in my defense that since the

beginning of the pandemic

i’ve cleared out most of that stuff

through donating it

and bartering it for other things that i

needed more

so back to barter it is inherently

communal is there somebody in my

community

that needs this good or the service i

can provide

more than that good or that service

sitting idle

and if there is is there something i

could get in exchange

that would be a value to me well perhaps

not

if you need to pay your car bill or your

utility bill

but for so many other things in your

life the answer is a resounding yes

so why aren’t we seeing consumer barter

at scale

well it usually boils down to something

known as the mutual coincidence of wants

say i want your apple but you don’t want

my orange so there’s no trade

but what if we could connect multiple

parties in a trade

that would be interesting and it’s

actually already happening in some

pretty unique ways

for you sports fans out there how about

multi-team trades

how many times have you seen a trade

that involved multiple teams

and a bunch of players and thought to

yourself how the hell did they do that

let’s look at something a little

weightier than that

organ transplants it used to be

that if i needed a kidney and my wife

for instance wasn’t a match

i would have to go on a list to get a

kidney and i would wait on that list

until one became available that was a

match usually

because somebody else who’s a match had

died

and oftentimes my name would not go to

the top of that list in time

back in 2000 a group of economists in

new england

got together and developed the first

multi-party organ transplant marketplace

so now the way this happens is if i need

a kidney

and my wife isn’t a match she can pledge

one of her kidneys

into the marketplace and then i can

receive

a kidney from another living donor

this radically changed how we address

organ transplantation

in the united states and around the

world and in fact

saves tens of thousands of people’s

lives a year

and it all boils down to multi-party

barter dynamics

can this work on a consumer level well

let’s go back to me i want your apple

but you don’t want my orange

fair enough what if

we could find somebody that wants my

orange

and you want a lime and they happen to

have a lime

if we can connect these dots then we can

actually

conclude this transaction successfully

for all of us and that is a multi-party

trade

now if we do this we sidestep

the core friction point of barter which

is the mutual coincidence of wants

and then we can scale barter and we can

impact lives around the world

in ways large and small

it’s worth thinking that uh worth

mentioning that for consumer barter

unlike organ transplants or pro sports

the old phrase holds true one person’s

trash is another person’s treasure

so in bartering it’s not critically

important

that you are trading with other people

at exact cash value for these goods and

services

what’s most important is that there are

enough options in any marketplace

that you can find something that you

value more

than the thing you’re willing to give in

order to get it

also what’s known as perceived value

is always in flux the perceived value of

a good or service is always in flux

especially in times of economic upheaval

for instance normally we would have

thought of a lawyer’s time as being more

valuable than an amazon warehouse

workers

that’s in flux right now items such as

toilet paper

and hand sanitizer usually thought of as

low value items

are so valuable right now during a

pandemic

that people are literally fighting for

them in the isles of stores

it’s an extreme example but it’s real

now we have seen during this pandemic

that consumers are trying to barter for

goods and services

they are gravitating to barter they’re

bartering for food

ppe clothes services

sourdough starter whatever they can

barter

because cash is at a premium right now

and they’re using any platform available

to them whether it’s facebook groups or

next door neighborhoods

there’s just so much value locked up in

the stuff that we have

including all that stuff in our storage

units that’s a shame that we wait for

times like this

to actually put that stuff into motion

and push it back into our communities

where it’s more valuable now

when we look to developing economies as

we discussed earlier

we see a lack of access to currency but

we also see

great increases in the adoption of

smartphones

and internet access and when we have

tools like that in people’s hands

the options to positively impact those

lives are endless

let me give you an example of how barter

can help people in far-reaching ways

one of my partners that have need who

leads our impact operations

has 25 plus years in international

development

and humanitarian aid and she is making

sure that we can address

use cases like this

a nigerian goat farmer has a broken

water pump

a mechanic in the next village has a son

who needs shoes for school

a leather worker nearby needs more food

to feed his family

and by connecting all of these people in

a multi-party barter

we can radically impact the quality of

their lives in one transaction

and at scale consumer barter can then

become

a meaningful part of the economy so

barter can develop multi-dimensional

impact

it’s good for you whether you have more

than you need or need more than you have

barter will allow you to acquire goods

and services

using only the goods and services you

can provide

it’s good for your community and that

barter is inherently communal

it connects us and we need that sense of

connection in times like this more than

ever

and barter is good for the planet

because it keeps all of our crap out of

the landfills

and pushes it back into our communities

where it can be used again

instead of buying throwing stuff out

buying new stuff

and perpetuating the cycle so how to

start

it could be simple as a babysitting swap

with a neighbor of yours to free up a

weekend night for both of you

there are online barter groups popping

up all over the place

simple internet search will point you

any number of them

and with this much barter activity on

the rise you can be sure that there are

purpose-built platforms coming to market

i’m going to leave you with an audience

participation challenge

take one of these ideas or come up with

one of your own

and do a trade instead of paying cash

for a good or a service then

estimate how much you have saved on that

trade and hide that money away

then do another and another and after

six months

figure out how much money you saved

it just might be that five hundred

dollars you need for the next emergency

that comes your way

thank you and remember try to leave the

campground nicer than you found it

you